June 2021

Leaders!

The Army has welcomed a few thousand new Second Lieutenants into our ranks since our last update.  For all you newcomers – welcome! We’ve been running some of our older content that is focused on newly commissioned officers.  We hope you’ve found it useful (for those of you who aren’t new to the Army – our hope is that you share some of these articles with those you coach and mentor).  That said, if there are topics or areas we should cover that we haven’t, please reach out and let us know! 

We also launched a new Listen2Lead product in May.  We’d love to hear your feedback or if you have ideas for future Listen2Lead topics. 

Reminder- we’re on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Please follow us if you’re on those platforms.  We’re posting new content almost daily. 

Highlights from the past month

• Challenging the Stigma of Menstruation
• Thoughts from a Covid Commander
• Building Partnerships (working with joint and civilian co-workers)
• Why Ranger Qualified LTs and SPCs are Hated
• Leading Creativity
• Failure is Your Friend (Listen2Lead)
• Understanding Microaggressions for the Army Leader (Listen2Lead)
• Cohesion in the Army (Watch2Lead)

We created three new Leader Challenges from officers who responded to our call for stories. One of these stories (“This Round’s on Me”) involves a Lieutenant facing a difficult decision on how to respond to a fellow Lieutenant’s questionable behavior.  The other two products “Training Shortcut” and “Altered Report” feature junior officers facing a difficult decision – weighing personal loyalty to respected leaders/friends and doing something that could harm these leaders’ careers.   All three products will be available upon request.  We will not be posting them to the website for a few months, but can share them with individuals if you’re interested.   Thank you to 1LT Kennedy, CPT DiFalco, and LTC Simpson for sharing your stories!

Finally, we’ve been posting clips from prominent leadership speakers (among other things) on our Instagram (@ArmyCJO).  Check us out!

Coming up

Some things we have in the works that you’ll see in the weeks ahead on the CJO website:

• An Examination of Why West Point LTs Lack Self-Awareness
• Becoming a Basic Training PL
• Benefits of OCT taskings
• Leading Change as a Company Commander in the First 90 days
• Book Review of 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

Other posts of interest

While we run/focus on the Center for Junior Officers site, we know there is a lot of other great content out there that can help junior officers in their pursuits.  Below are a few articles/products from other sources that you might find interesting – we did!

• Project Athena review (from The Company Leader)
• Does having a bad boss make you more likely to be one yourself? (HBR)
• A PL’s takeaway from the recent extremism stand-down (from the Green Notebook)
• A story of hand-to-hand combat (MWI podcast)

Note- two of these are written by junior officers!

Join the team

If you’re an active-duty junior officer who is interested in obtaining a fully-funded advanced degree  (or if you already have an advanced degree from a top-tier institution in a topic related to organizational behavior, I/O psychology, MBA, or related area), will have completed your key development position requirements as a Captain by May 2023, and want to PCS to West Point to join the Center for Junior Officers team, please reach out and let us know.   Or – if you know of a junior officer who might be a good fit, let us know.  We can reach out and answer questions.   You/They do NOT need to be a West Point graduate to apply.

While they don’t mention this position specifically, the following recent articles offer information and insights that are relevant to anyone interested in applying to become the Operations Officer of the Center for Junior Officers.

• https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2021/03/17/educate-train-inspire-west-point-broadening-opportunities/
• https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2021/03/22/duty-honor-country-broadening-opportunities-at-the-u-s-military-academy/
• https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2021/03/24/usma-broadening-tactical-officer/

Additional information is also located here.

Where we can use your help

Some specific projects we could use your assistance on include:

• Anyone want to share their review/analysis of popular books that Commanders/Senior leaders are recommending? This isn’t a book summary, rather an analysis/your opinion on the piece.  Here is an example of what we found was popular (Once an Eagle: Idol or Idle).  If you’ve been tasked to lead a discussion or your unit is having you read a book already, this could be some “low hanging fruit” – and a chance to share your insights with a larger audience.

In closing

Until next month – lead well my friends